The foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty was plunged in­to mourn­ing yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the ear­ly-morn­ing death of for­mer na­tion­al, St An­tho­ny's Col­lege and Queen's Roy­al Col­lege foot­ball coach Nigel Grosvenor. He was 63.

A man, who has ded­i­cat­ed his en­tire life to foot­ball, Grosvenor has been bat­tling can­cer for the past years, and on­ly a cou­ple months ago he was ad­mit­ted to the Cou­va hos­pi­tal when he con­tract­ed the dead­ly coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

He ap­peared to have been re­cov­er­ing well from the virus, but at 3 am yes­ter­day morn­ing the man known pop­u­lar­ly as "Grovey" passed away re­port­ed­ly from kid­ney fail­ure.

Grosvenor was a house­hold name in T&T foot­ball par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) where he won five Co­ca Co­la Na­tion­al In­ter­Col ti­tles and two League ti­tles with St An­tho­ny's Col­lege, now known as the "West­moor­ing Tigers". He al­so won count­less North Zone ti­tles. How­ev­er, Grosvenor will be re­mem­bered for his ded­i­ca­tion to pro­duc­ing all­round in­di­vid­u­als through foot­ball.

Joel Gib­bon, who played in the ear­ly 1990s, said Grovey just want­ed to help young peo­ple by giv­ing them an op­por­tu­ni­ty at life.

He said, "There were play­ers who came to school and had no mon­ey to go back home or any­thing to eat but Grovey was al­ways there to help them. He was gen­uine and he im­pact­ed many lives."

Evans Wise, one of a few play­ers who moved from Grosvenor's care to the coun­try's se­nior na­tion­al team, de­scribed yes­ter­day as a sad day in our foot­ball his­to­ry.

"We have lost a good one, some­one who was more than just a friend to me but a fa­ther fig­ure, some­one who al­ways looked out for you as a per­son. He was a class act and I have lost some­one close to my heart," Wise said.

He added: "I am still at a lost for words be­cause I thought he was re­cov­er­ing well."

The mul­ti-tal­ent­ed left foot­er who was among Leo Been­hakker's team that went to the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many, is call­ing for the An­tho­ny's Col­lege Ground to be named af­ter Grosvenor.

An­oth­er play­er Brent Rahim, who was la­belled the re­place­ment for mid­field mae­stro Rus­sell Lat­apy, was yes­ter­day too dis­traught to talk when he heard the news.

Grosvenor was a fa­ther of three - Qian, Quia and Quishelle - but his pas­sion to help oth­ers quick­ly made him a guardian of many, some of whom went on schol­ar­ships and con­tracts af­ter their in­volve­ment with him, such as Rahim, Wise, Ken­wyne Jones, the for­mer na­tion­al cap­tain Gib­bon, Gary Gib­bons, Ricky Ale­ong, Ian Mc Cauley, Julius James, Yohancey Mar­shall, Kevin Neaves, Mau­rice Loreg­nard, Joel Pen­co, Steve Sealy, Abi­o­la Clarence, Car­los Ed­wards, Jean Williams, Dimien and Dinelon West­field, and Rod­er­ick An­tho­ny, who died in a car crash a few months ago, among many oth­ers.

Due to his suc­cess­es, Grovey al­so earned the right to coach the coun­try's Un­der-15 boys' team.

On­ly in De­cem­ber, last year Grosvenor re­tired as a coach af­ter three years at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege where he failed to win any­thing.